The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

by Peter Hopkirk

  There was plenty of time, too, for serious discussion on political and commercial matters, which was the real purpose of their coming. Burnes was profoundly impressed by the wizened old Sikh who, despite his diminutive size and unattractive appearance, had gained the respect and loyalty of this warrior people, every one of whom towered over him in stature, for so long. ‘Nature’, Burnes wrote, ‘has indeed been sparing in her gifts to this personage. He has lost an eye, is pitted by the small-pox, and his stature does not exceed five feet three inches.’ Yet he commanded the instant attention of all around him. ‘Not an individual spoke without a sign,’ Burnes noted, ‘though the throng was more like a bazaar than the Court of the first native prince in these times.’

  Like all native rulers, however, he could be ruthless, although he claimed that during his long reign he had never punished anyone by execution. ‘Cunning and conciliation’, Burnes wrote, ‘have been the two great weapons of his diplomacy.’ But how much longer would he remain in power? ‘It is probable’, reported Burnes, ‘that the career of this chief is nearly at an end. His chest is contracted, his back is bent, his limbs withered.’ His nightly drinking bouts, Burnes feared, were more than anyone could take. However, his favourite tipple – ‘more ardent than the strongest brandy’ – appeared to do him no harm. Ranjit Singh was to survive another eight years – greatly to the relief of the Company’s generals, who saw him as a vital link in India’s outer defences, and a formidable ally against a Russian invader.

  Finally, in August 1831, laden with gifts and compliments, Burnes and his companions crossed back into British territory, making for Ludhiana, the Company’s most forward garrison town in north-west India. There Burnes met briefly a man whose fate was to be closely bound to his own – Shah Shujah, the exiled Afghan ruler, who dreamed of regaining his lost throne by toppling its present occupant, the redoubtable Dost Mohammed. Burnes was not impressed by this melancholy-looking man who was already turning to fat. ‘From what I learn,’ he noted, ‘I do not believe that the Shah possesses sufficient energy to set himself on the throne of Cabool.’ Nor, Burnes felt, did he appear to have the personal qualities or political acumen to reunite so turbulent a nation as the Afghans.

  A week later Burnes reached Simla, the Indian government’s summer capital, where he reported to Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, on the results of his mission. He had shown that the Indus was navigable for flat-bottomed craft, whether warships or cargo-boats, as far north as Lahore. As a result of this discovery it was decided to proceed with plans to open up the great waterway to shipping, so that British goods could eventually compete with Russian ones in Turkestan and elsewhere in Central Asia. Bentinck therefore dispatched Henry Pottinger, now a colonel in the political service, to begin negotiations with the emirs of Sind over the passage of goods through their territories. Ranjit Singh, Burnes reported, would present no problems. Apart from being friendly towards the British, he would also benefit from this passing trade. Burnes’s superiors were delighted with the results of his first mission, and no one more so than the Governor-General who, on Sir John Malcolm’s recommendation, had chosen him for it. He was commended by Bentinck for the ‘zeal, diligence and intelligence’ with which he had carried out his delicate task. At the age of 26, Burnes was already on his way to the top.

  Having won the Governor-General’s ear and confidence, Burnes now put forward an idea of his own for a second, more ambitious mission. This was to reconnoitre those hitherto unmapped routes to India lying to the north of the ones which Arthur Conolly had explored the previous year. He proposed travelling first to Kabul, where he would seek to establish friendly links with Ranjit Singh’s great rival Dost Mohammed, and at the same time endeavour to gauge the strength and efficiency of his armed forces and the vulnerability of his capital. From Kabul he intended to proceed through the passes of the Hindu Kush and across the Oxus to Bokhara. There he hoped to do much the same as in Kabul, returning to India via the Caspian Sea and Persia with a mass of military and political intelligence for his chiefs. It was a highly ambitious scheme, for most people would have settled for either Kabul or Bokhara, not both.

  Burnes expected strong opposition to his proposal, not least because of his junior rank and the extreme sensitivity of the region. It came as a pleasant surprise therefore when in December 1831 he was informed by the Governor-General that approval had been given for him to proceed. Burnes was soon to discover the reason for this. The timing of his suggestion could not have been better. In London the new Whig Cabinet under Grey was beginning to feel as uneasy as the Tories about the growing strength and influence of the Russians, both in Europe and in High Asia. ‘The Home Government’, Burnes wrote to his sister, ‘have got frightened at the designs of Russia, and desired that some intelligent officer should be sent to acquire information in the countries bordering on the Oxus and the Caspian . . . and I, knowing nothing of all this, come forward and volunteer precisely for what they want.’

  He immediately set about making plans for the journey and choosing suitable companions – one Englishman and two Indians. The former was a Bengal Army doctor named James Gerard, an officer with a taste for adventure and with previous experience of travel in the Himalayas. One of the Indians was a bright, well-educated Kashmiri named Mohan Lai. He was fluent in several languages, which would come in useful when oriental niceties had to be observed. It would also be one of his tasks to record much of the intelligence gathered by the mission. The other Indian was an experienced Company surveyor named Mohammed Ali who had accompanied Burnes on the Indus survey and had already proved his worth. In addition to these three, Burnes brought his own personal servant who had been with him almost since his arrival in India eleven years earlier.

  On March 17, 1832, the party crossed the Indus at Attock, turning their backs on the Punjab, where they had enjoyed Ranjit Singh’s hospitality and protection, and prepared to enter Afghanistan. ‘It now became necessary to divest ourselves of almost everything which belonged to us,’ Burnes was to write, ‘and discontinue many habits and practices which had become a second nature.’ They disposed of their European clothing and adopted Afghan dress, shaving their heads and covering them with turbans. Over their long, flowing robes they wore cummerbunds, from which they hung swords. But they made no attempt to conceal the fact that they were Europeans – returning home to England, they claimed, by the overland route. Their aim was to try to melt into the background, and thus avoid attracting unwelcome attention; ‘I adopted this resolution’, Burnes explained, ‘in an utter hopelessness of supporting the disguise of a native, and from having observed that no European traveller has ever journeyed in such countries without suspicion and seldom without discovery.’

  Robbery, he believed, was their greatest danger, and the expedition’s small treasury was divided among its members for concealment on their persons. ‘A letter of credit for five thousand rupees’, Burnes wrote, ‘was fastened to my left arm in the way Asiatics wear amulets.’ His passport and letters of introduction were attached to his other arm, while a bag of gold coins hung from a belt beneath his robes. It was also agreed that Gerard should not dispense free medicines for fear that this might give the impression that they were wealthy. In Afghanistan, where every man carried a weapon and coveted the property of strangers, one could not afford to be off one’s guard for a second.

  They had been warned that if they attempted the Khyber Pass they would be unlikely to get through alive, so instead they crossed the mountains by a longer and more tortuous route. After passing safely through Jalalabad, they took the main caravan route westwards towards Kabul. All around them as they rode were snow-capped mountains, while in the far distance could be seen the mighty peaks of the Hindu Kush. Their problems proved fewer than they had feared, and one bitterly cold night they were allowed to sleep in a mosque, although the villagers knew they were infidels. ‘They do not appear to have the smallest prejudice against a Christian,’ Burnes wrote, and nowhere did he
or Dr Gerard attempt to conceal their religion. Nonetheless they were cautious, and most careful not to cause offence. ‘When they ask me if I eat pork,’ Burnes was to write, ‘I of course shudder and say it is only outcasts who commit such outrages. God forgive me! For I am very fond of bacon and my mouth waters when I write the word.’

  At midnight on April 30 they reached the pass leading down to Kabul, and the following afternoon entered the capital, proceeding first to the customs house. Here, to their alarm, their baggage was searched. This was something they had not anticipated, though fortunately it did not prove to be very thorough. ‘My sextant and books, with the doctor’s few bottles and paraphernalia, were laid out in state for the inspection of the citizens,’ Burnes recounted. ‘They did them no harm, but set us down without doubt as conjurors, after a display of such unintelligible apparatus.’

  Six weeks after crossing the River Indus they had reached their first goal. It was here in Dost Mohammed’s stronghold that their mission would really begin. By the time it was over, nine months later, it would have won for Burnes the kind of acclaim that Lawrence’s exploits in Arabia were to attract seventy-five years later.

  Although the name of Alexander Burnes will always be associated with Bokhara, it is to Kabul that it really belongs. For it was with the Afghan capital and its ruler that his destiny was to be fatally entwined. On this first visit to it, in the spring of 1832, he was to fall in love with the city, likening it to paradise. Its many gardens, so abundant in fruit-trees and song-birds, reminded him of England. ‘There were peaches, plums, apricots, pears, apples, quinces, cherries, walnuts, mulberries, pomegranates and vines,’ he wrote, ‘all growing in one garden. There were also nightingales, blackbirds, thrushes and doves . . . and chattering magpies on almost every tree.’ So struck was Burnes by the song of the nightingales that an Afghan friend was later to have one delivered to him in India. Christened ‘the nightingale of a thousand tales’, it sang so loudly all night that it had to be removed from earshot so that he could sleep.

  Burnes and Dost Mohammed hit it off from the start. The Englishman, who maintained his story that he was on his way home via Kabul and Bokhara, had brought with him valuable letters of introduction to the Afghan potentate, and very soon found himself invited to the royal palace within the Bala Hissar, the great walled citadel overlooking the capital. In contrast to his neighbour and foe Ranjit Singh, Dost Mohammed was a man of surprisingly modest tastes, and he and Burnes sat cross-legged together on a carpet in a room otherwise devoid of furniture.

  Like all Afghan princes, Dost Mohammed had been schooled almost from birth in the arts of intrigue and treachery. In addition he had been born with other, more subtle qualities inherited from his Persian mother. All this had enabled him to outmanoeuvre his several older brothers in the struggle for the throne of Kabul which had followed the ousting of Shah Shujah, now in exile at Ludhiana, and by 1826 he had finally won it for himself. Unable to read or write, he had at once set about remedying this and at the same time restoring order and prosperity to his new domains. Burnes and his companions found themselves much impressed by what he had managed to achieve in this turbulent land in those six years.

  ‘The reputation of Dost Mohammed’, Burnes reported, ‘is made known to the traveller long before he enters the country, and no one better merits the high character he has obtained. The justice of this chief affords a constant theme of praise to all classes. The peasant rejoices at the absence of tyranny, the citizen at the safety of his house and the strict municipal regulations, the merchant at the equity of his decisions and the protection of his property.’ A potentate, Burnes concluded, could enjoy no higher praise than that. But Mohan Lai, the young Kashmiri in the party, was less convinced of the Afghan ruler’s benevolence, observing later that while he was ‘prudent and wise in cabinet, and an able commander in the field’, he was no less able in the arts of ‘treachery, cruelty, murder and falsehood’.

  Welcoming Burnes at their first meeting, Dost Mohammed declared that although he was unfamiliar with Englishmen, he had heard others speak well of both them and their nation. In his eagerness for knowledge of the outside world and how it managed its affairs, he showered Burnes with questions. He wanted to know all about Europe, how many kings it had, and how they prevented neighbouring ones from trying to overthrow them. The questions were so numerous and diverse that Burnes soon lost track of them, but they included law, revenue collection, the manner in which European nations raised their armies (he had heard that the Russians used conscription), and even foundling hospitals. He also wanted to know whether the British had any designs on Afghanistan, looking Burnes sharply in the eye as he asked. Aware that Ranjit Singh employed European officers to train and modernise his army, he even offered Burnes, whom he knew to be a Company officer, the command of his. ‘Twelve thousand horse and twenty guns shall be at your disposal,’ he promised, and when Burnes gracefully declined the honour he invited him to recommend a brother officer instead.

  Dost Mohammed made no attempt to conceal his dislike of his powerful and arrogant Sikh neighbour, and asked Burnes whether the British would like his help in overthrowing him. It was an embarrassing offer, for the removal of the friendly Ranjit was the very last thing anyone in Calcutta or London wanted. To them it was not the Sikhs who were the worry, but the unruly Afghans. After all, only seventy-five years earlier they had poured down through the Khyber Pass and sacked Delhi, riding home triumphantly with all the treasures they could carry. Thanking Dost Mohammed for his offer, Burnes pointed out that his government had a long-standing treaty with Ranjit and could not afford to be on bad terms with so formidable a neighbour. As a political officer, Burnes knew that what Calcutta really needed on this, its most vulnerable frontier, was not two warring rivals, but two strong and stable allies, both friendly to Britain, to serve as a shield against invasion. However, he had been sent to report on these rulers’ sympathies, not to try to reconcile them. That would come later, as would the crucial question of which of the several rivals for the throne of a united Afghanistan Britain should back. Conolly had argued for Kamran Shah, if only because it was vital to keep Herat out of Persian (and therefore eventually Russian) hands. Burnes had no doubts whatever about his candidate. Dost Mohammed, he believed, should be courted by Britain and kept firmly on his throne, as the only man capable of uniting this warlike nation.

  Burnes and his party would happily have stayed much longer, sipping tea and gossiping with Afghan friends in this delightful town, but their journey to Bokhara still lay ahead of them. After one final meeting with Dost Mohammed which continued until long after midnight, they set off northwards towards the passes of the Hindu Kush, beyond which lay Balkh, the Oxus and, ultimately, Bokhara. Once they were clear of Dost Mohammed’s territories they would be embarking on the most dangerous stretch of their journey, and the fate of Moorcroft and his two companions, only seven years earlier, was now never far from their thoughts. When they reached the once-great city of Balkh, by then reduced to ruins, they were determined to track down the men’s lonely graves as an act of personal homage.

  The first one they managed to locate, in a village several miles away, was that of George Trebeck, the last of Moorcroft’s party to die. It lay, unmarked, beneath a mulberry tree. ‘After burying his two European fellow-travellers,’ Burnes wrote, ‘he sank, at an early age, after four months’ suffering, in a far distant country, without a friend, without assistance, and without consolation.’ They finally came upon the graves of Moorcroft and Guthrie, buried side by side, beneath a mud wall outside Balkh. Because they were Christians, the locals had insisted that they be buried without a headstone of any kind. It was a clear, moonlit night, and Burnes was much affected, for Moorcroft was a man whom he, like all those who played the Great Game, much revered. ‘It was impossible to view such a scene at dead of night without any melancholy reflections,’ he wrote. ‘A whole party, buried within twelve miles of each other, held out small encouragement to us who
were pursuing the same track and were led on by nearly similar motives.’

  But they had little time to spare for such morbid considerations. They had reached the Oxus safely, and there were important if discreet enquiries to be made about the great river, up which, it had long been feared, a Russian invasion force might one day sail from the Aral Sea to Balkh. In his published narrative Burnes gives little indication of how they set about this during their five days in the region, describing instead their search for coins and antiquities in the ruins of ancient Balkh. It is only when one reads Burnes’s secret reports to his chiefs, whose faded transcripts are today in the archives of the India Office in London, that one realises how busy they must have been enquiring about the river’s navigability, the availability of food and other supplies in the region, and further strategic considerations. This task completed, they now set out on the final stage of their journey, the gruelling, ten-day desert crossing to Bokhara. For this they attached themselves to a large, well-armed caravan. Although they were now nominally within the domains of the Emir of Bokhara, they knew there was a real risk of being seized by Turcoman slavers and ending up in shackles in the city’s market square. But apart from a mysterious fever which afflicted Burnes and his companions, reminding them uncomfortably of the fate of their three predecessors, the journey passed off without mishap.

  As they approached Bokhara, Burnes composed a letter, redolent with oriental flattery, which he sent ahead of them to the Koosh Begee, or Grand Vizier, expressing their wish to see the legendary glories of the holy city. His liberal use of phrases describing the vizier as ‘the Tower of Islam’, and ‘the Gem of the Faith’ clearly pleased the recipient, for a messenger soon returned to say that they would be welcome to visit Bokhara. Still weak from their illness, Burnes and Gerard, together with their native companions, finally rode through the city’s main gateway on the morning of June 27, 1832, just six months after leaving Delhi. Later on that same day Burnes was summoned before the Grand Vizier at the Emir’s palace in Bokhara’s famous Ark, or citadel, some two miles from their lodgings. After changing into local garb, Burnes proceeded there on foot, for it was strictly forbidden for all but Muslims to ride within the holy city. He went alone, Gerard still being too ill to accompany him.